This invention relates to computer aided design and more particularly, to controlling the entire design, for example, from engineering concepts through physical design and tests, to schematics, final layout and manufacturing specifications.
Considerable emphasis has been placed on computerized design. Computer-aided design has been used, for example, to lay out integrated circuits and VLSI chips. Computer-aided techniques have also been used to translate logic diagrams into electrical schematics and to lay out printed circuit boards from electrical schematics. Examples of such computer-aided electronic circuit design are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,377,849-Finger, et al "MACRO ASSEMBLER PROCESS FOR AUTOMATED CIRCUIT DESIGN"; and 3,622,762-Dyer, et al "CIRCUIT DESIGN BY AN AUTOMATED DATA PROCESSING MACHINE".
Typically, in the prior art, computer-aided techniques have been used to generate electrical schematic diagrams and another computer-aided process has been used to simulate the operation of the circuit and another, to generate physical layouts of the circuit board. Then, a simulation is made of the operation of the electrical and mechanical circuits and the two are compared. Differences are adjusted, finally producing an electrical and mechanical layout of the circuit which satisfies the designer's requirements. Documentation representing the electrical schematic and the physical layout is produced and used in the manufacture of the circuit boards. One of the principal problems in this prior art approach is that when changes are made in either the physical layout of the circuit or in the electrical schematic, these changes are not necessarily accurately reflected in the documentation for all parts of the electronic circuits.
It is desirable to bind the logical model, electrical circuit layout and mechanical design in the computer program so that changes in any one of them are reflected in changes in all of them and in their documentation. This has not been done in the past because of the complexity of programming required to perform all of the operations on one single data base.
Workers in the field have recognized that object-oriented programming will reduce the complexity of coding. For example, Xerox Corporation developed a computer-aided system referred to as "Small Talk". But the speed of the system was not sufficiently high for the design automation process. It was not a computational efficient program.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a computer-aided design system with object-oriented coding which is extremely fast.
It is another object of the present invention to increase the productivity of designers by providing a tool which will produce complete designs.
It is another object of the present invention to reduce errors and produce design continuity.